Humanity replies: "I remember it."
[Sidenote: _Philosophy as perfect science. The so-called natural
sciences, and their limits._]
The world of what has happened, of the concrete, of historical fact,
is the world called real, natural, including in this definition both
the reality called physical and that called spiritual and human. All
this world is intuition; historical intuition, if it be shown as it
realistically is; imaginary or artistic intuition in the narrow sense,
if presented in the aspect of the possible, that is to say, of the
imaginable.
Science, true science, which is not intuition but concept, not
individuality but universality, cannot be anything but science of the
spirit, that is, of what reality has of universal: Philosophy. If
natural _sciences_ be spoken of, apart from philosophy, we must observe
that these are not perfect sciences: they are aggregates of cognitions,
arbitrarily abstracted and fixed. The so-called natural sciences
indeed themselves recognize that they are surrounded by limitations,
and these limitations are nothing but historical and intuitive data.
They calculate, measure, establish equalities and uniformities,
create classes and types, formulate laws, show in their own way how
one fact arises out of other facts; but while doing this they are
constantly running into facts known intuitively and historically.
Even geometry now states that it rests altogether on hypotheses,
since threedimensional or Euclidean space is but one of the possible
spaces, selected for purposes of study because more convenient. What
is true in the natural sciences is either philosophy or historical
fact. What of properly naturalistic they contain, is abstraction and
caprice. When the natural sciences wish to become perfect sciences,
they must leave their circle and enter philosophy. They do this when
they posit concepts which are anything but naturalistic, such as those
of the unextended atom, of ether or vibration, of vital force, of
non-intuitional space, and the like. These are true and proper attempts
at philosophy, when they are not mere words void of meaning. The
concepts of natural science are, without doubt, most useful; but one
cannot obtain from them that _system_ which belongs only to the spirit.
These historical and intuitive data which cannot be eliminated from the
natural sciences furthermore explain not only how, with the advance
of knowledge, what was once believed to be true sinks gradually to
the level of mythological belief and fantastic illusion, but also how
among natural scientists some are to be found who call everything in
their sciences upon which reasoning is founded _mythical facts, verbal
expedients,_ or _conventions._ Natural scientists and mathematicians
who approach the study of the energies of the spirit without
preparation, are apt to carry thither such mental habits and to speak
in philosophy of such and such conventions as "decreed by man." They
make conventions of truth and morality, and a supreme convention of
the Spirit itself! But if there are to be conventions, something must
exist which is no convention, but is itself the author of conventions.
This is the spiritual activity of man. The limitation of the natural
sciences postulates the illimitability of philosophy.
[Sidenote: _The phenomenon and the noumenon._]
These explications have firmly established that the pure or fundamental
forms of knowledge are two: the intuition and the concept--Art, and
Science or Philosophy. With these are to be included History, which
is, as it were, the product of intuition placed in contact with the
concept, that is, of art receiving in itself philosophic distinctions,
while remaining concrete and individual. All other forms (natural
sciences and mathematics) are impure, being mingled with extraneous
elements of practical origin. Intuition gives us the world, the
phenomenon; the concept gives us the noumenon, the Spirit.
IV
HISTORICISM AND INTELLECTUALISM IN ÆSTHETIC
These relations between intuitive or æsthetic knowledge and the other
fundamental or derivative forms of knowledge having been definitely
established, we are now in a position to reveal the errors of a series
of theories which have been, or are, presented as theories of Æsthetic.
[Sidenote: _Criticism of probability and of naturalism._]
From the confusion between the demands of art in general and the
particular demands of history has resulted the theory (which has lost
ground to-day, but was once dominant) of the _probable_ as the object
of art. As is generally the case with erroneous propositions, the
meaning of those who employed and employ the concept of probability
has no doubt often been much more reasonable than their definition
of the word. By probability used really to be meant the artistic
_coherence_ of the representation, that is to say, its completeness
and effectiveness, its actual presence. If "probable" be translated
"coherent," a very just meaning will often be found in the discussions,
examples, and judgements of the critics who employ this word. An
improbable personage, an improbable ending to a comedy, are really
badly-drawn personages, badly-arranged endings, happenings without
artistic motive. It has been said with reason that even fairies and
sprites must have probability, that is to say, be really sprites and
fairies, coherent artistic intuitions. Sometimes the word "possible"
has been used instead of "probable." As we have already remarked in
passing, this word possible is synonymous with the imaginable or
intuitible. Everything truly, that is to say coherently, imagined, is
possible. But also, by a good many critics and theorists, the probable
was taken to mean the historically credible, or that historical truth
which is not demonstrable but conjecturable, not true but probable.
This was the character which these theorists sought to impose upon art.
Who does not remember how great a part was played in literary history
by criticism based on probability, for example, censure of _Jerusalem
Delivered,_ based upon the history of the Crusades, or of the Homeric
poems, upon the probable customs of emperors and kings? Sometimes too
the æsthetic reproduction of historical reality has been imposed upon
art. This is another of the erroneous forms taken by the theory of the
_imitation of nature._ Verism and naturalism also have afforded the
spectacle of a confusion of the æsthetic fact with the processes of the
natural sciences, by aiming at some sort of _experimental_ drama or
romance.
[Sidenote: _Criticism of ideas in art, of theses in art and of the
typical._]
Confusions between the methods of art and those of the philosophic
sciences have been far more frequent. Thus it has often been held to
be the task of art to expound concepts, to unite an intelligible with
a sensible, to represent _ideas_ or _universals_; putting art in the
place of science, that is, confusing the artistic function in general
with the particular case in which it becomes æsthetico-logical.
The theory of art as supporting _theses,_ of art considered as an
individual representation exemplifying scientific laws, can be proved
false in like manner. The example, as example, stands for the thing
exemplified, and is thus an exposition of the universal, that is to
say, a form of science, more or less popular or vulgarizing.
The same may be said of the æsthetic theory of the _typical,_ when
by type is understood, as it frequently is, the abstraction or the
concept, and it is affirmed that art should make the _species_ shine
in the _individual._ If individual be here understood by typical, we
have here too a merely verbal variation. To typify would signify, in
this case, to characterize; that is, to determine and to represent
the individual. Don Quixote is a type; but of what is he a type, save
of all Don Quixotes? A type, so to speak, of himself. Certainly he
is not a type of abstract concepts, such as the loss of the sense of
reality, or of the love of glory. An infinite number of personages
can be thought of under these concepts, who are not Don Quixotes. In
other words, we find our own impressions fully determined and realized
in the expression of a poet (for example in a poetical personage). We
call that expression typical, which we might call simply æsthetic. Thus
poetical or artistic universals have sometimes been spoken of, only to
show that the artistic product is altogether spiritual and ideal.
[Sidenote: _Criticism of the symbol and of the allegory._]
Continuing to correct these errors, or to clear up misunderstandings,
we shall also remark that the _symbol_ has sometimes been given as the
essence of art. Now, if the symbol be conceived as inseparable from the
artistic intuition, it is a synonym for the intuition itself, which
always has an ideal character. There is no double bottom to art, but
one only; in art all is symbolical, because all is ideal. But if the
symbol be conceived as separable--if the symbol can be on one side,
and on the other the thing symbolized, we fall back again into the
intellectualist error: the so-called symbol is the exposition of an
abstract concept, an _allegory_; it is science, or art aping science.
But we must also be just toward the allegorical. Sometimes it is
altogether harmless. Given the _Gerusalemme liberata,_ the allegory
was imagined afterwards; given the _A done_ of Marino, the poet of
the lascivious afterwards insinuated that it was written to show how
"immoderate indulgence ends in pain"; given a statue of a beautiful
woman, the sculptor can attach a label to the statue saying that
it represents _Clemency_ or _Goodness._ This allegory that arrives
attached to a finished work _post festum_ does not change the work of
art. What then is it? It is an expression externally _added_ to another
expression. A little page of prose is added to the _Gerusalemme,_
expressing another thought of the poet; a verse or a strophe is added
to the _Adone,_ expressing what the poet would like to make a part
of his public believe; to the statue nothing but the single word:
_Clemency_ or _Goodness._
[Sidenote: _Criticism of the theory of artistic and literary kinds._]
But the greatest triumph of the intellectualist error lies in the
theory of artistic and literary kinds, which still has vogue in
literary treatises and disturbs the critics and the historians of art.
Let us observe its genesis.
The human mind can pass from the æsthetic to the logical, just because
the former is a first step in respect to the latter. It can destroy
expression, that is, the thought of the individual, by thinking of the
universal. It can gather up expressive facts into logical relations.
We have already shown that this operation becomes in its turn concrete
in an expression, but this does not mean that the first expressions
have not been destroyed. They have yielded their place to the new
æsthetico-logical expressions. When we are on the second step, we have
left the first.
One who enters a picture-gallery, or who reads a series of poems,
having looked and read, may go further: he may seek out the nature and
the relations of the things there expressed. Thus those pictures and
compositions, each of which is an individual inexpressible in logical
terms, are gradually resolved into universals and abstractions, such
as _costumes, landscapes, portraits, domestic life, battles, animals,
flowers, fruit, seascapes, lakes, deserts; tragic, comic, pathetic,
cruel, lyrical, epic, dramatic, chivalrous, idyllic facts,_ and the
like. They are often also resolved into merely quantitative categories,
such as _miniature, picture, statuette, group, madrigal, ballad,
sonnet, sonnet-sequence, poetry, poem, story, romance,_ and the like.
When we think the concept _domestic life,_ or _chivalry,_ or _idyll,_
or _cruelty,_ or one of the quantitative concepts mentioned above, the
individual expressive fact from which we started has been abandoned.
From æsthetes that we were, we have changed into logicians; from
contemplators of expression, into reasoners. Certainly no objection
can be made to such a process. In what other way could science arise,
which, if it have æsthetic expressions presupposed in it, must yet go
beyond them in order to fulfil its function? The logical or scientific
form, as such, excludes the æsthetic form. He who begins to think
scientifically has already ceased to contemplate æsthetically; although
his thought assumes of necessity in its turn an æsthetic form, as has
already been said, and as it would be superfluous to repeat.
Error begins when we try to deduce the expression from the concept, and
to find in what takes its place the laws of the thing whose place is
taken; when the difference between the second and the first step has
not been observed, and when, in consequence, we declare that we are
standing on the first step, when we are really standing on the second.
This error is known as the _theory of artistic and literary kinds._
"What is the _æsthetic_ form of domestic life, of chivalry, of
the idyll, of cruelty, and so forth? How should these contents be
_represented_?" Such is the absurd problem implied in the theory of
artistic and literary classes, when it has been shorn of excrescences
and reduced to a simple formula. It is in this that consists all
search after laws or rules of classes. Domestic life, chivalry, idyll,
cruelty and the like, are not impressions, but concepts. They are not
contents, but logical-æsthetic forms. You cannot express the form,
for it is already itself expression. For what are the words cruelty,
idyll, chivalry, domestic life, and so on, but the expression of those
concepts?
Even the most refined of such distinctions, which possess the most
philosophic appearance, do not resist criticism; as when works of art
are divided into subjective and objective kinds, into lyric and epic,
into works of feeling and decorative works. In æsthetic analysis it is
impossible to separate subjective from objective, lyric from epic, the
image of feeling from that of things.
[Sidenote: _Errors derived from this theory in judgements on art._]
From the theory of artistic and literary kinds derive those erroneous
modes of judgement and of criticism, thanks to which, instead of asking
before a work of art if it be expressive and what it expresses, whether
it speak or stammer or is altogether silent, they ask if it obey the
_laws_ of epic or of tragedy, of historical painting or of landscape.
While making a verbal pretence of agreeing, or yielding a feigned
obedience, artists have, however, really always disregarded these _laws
of the kinds._ Every true work of art has violated some established
kind and upset the ideas of the critics, who have thus been obliged to
broaden the kinds, until finally even the broadened kind has proved too
narrow, owing to the appearance of new works of art, naturally followed
by new scandals, new upsettings and--new broadenings.
To the same theory are due the prejudices, owing to which at one time
(is it really passed?) people used to lament that Italy had no tragedy
(until one arose who bestowed such a wreath, which alone of adornments
was wanting to her glorious locks), nor France the epic poem (until the
_Henriade,_ which slaked the thirsty throats of the critics). Eulogies
accorded to the inventors of new kinds are connected with these
prejudices, so much so, that in the seventeenth century the invention
of the _mock-heroic_ poem seemed an important event, and the honour of
it was disputed, as though it were the discovery of America. But the
works adorned with this name (the _Secchia rapita_ and the _Scherno
degli Dei_) were still-born, because their authors (a slight drawback)
had nothing new or original to say. Mediocrities racked their brains to
invent new kinds artificially. The _piscatorial_ eclogue was added to
the _pastoral,_ and finally the _military_ eclogue. The _Aminta_ was
dipped and became the _Alceo._ Finally, there have been historians of
art and literature, so much fascinated with these ideas of kinds, that
they claimed to write the history, not of individual and real literary
and artistic works, but of those empty phantoms, their kinds. They have
claimed to portray, not the evolution of the _artistic spirit,_ but the
_evolution of kinds._
The philosophical condemnation of artistic and literary kinds is found
in the formulation and demonstration of what artistic activity has
always done and good taste always recognized. What are we to do if good
taste and the real fact, when reduced to formulas, sometimes assume
the air of paradoxes?
[Sidenote: _Empirical sense of the divisions of kinds._]
It is not scientifically incorrect to talk of tragedies, comedies,
dramas, romances, pictures of everyday life, battle-pieces, landscapes,
seascapes, poems, versicles, lyrics, and the like, if it be only with
a view to be understood, and to draw attention to certain groups
of works, in general and approximately, to which, for one reason
or another, it is desired to draw attention. To employ _words_ and
_phrases_ is not to establish _laws_ and _definitions._ The mistake
only arises when the weight of a scientific definition is given to a
word, when we ingenuously let ourselves be caught in the meshes of
that phraseology. Pray permit me a comparison. The books in a library
must be arranged in one way or another. This used generally to be done
by a rough classification of subjects (among which the categories of
miscellaneous and eccentric were not wanting); they are now generally
arranged by sizes or by publishers. Who can deny the necessity and
the utility of such arrangements? But what should we say if some one
began seriously to seek out the literary laws of miscellanies and of
eccentricities, of the Aldines or Bodonis, of shelf A or shelf B,
that is to say, of those altogether arbitrary groupings whose sole
object was their practical utility. Yet should any one attempt such
an undertaking, he would be doing neither more nor less than those do
who seek out the _æsthetic laws_ which must in their belief control
literary and artistic kinds.
V
ANALOGOUS ERRORS IN THE THEORY OF HISTORY AND IN LOGIC
The better to confirm these criticisms, it will be useful to cast a
rapid glance over analogous and opposite errors, due to ignorance as
to the true nature of art and its relation to history and to science.
These errors have injured alike the theory of history and that of
science, Historic (or Historiology) and Logic.
[Sidenote: _Criticism of the philosophy of history._]
Historical intellectualism has opened the way to the many attempts,
made especially during the last two centuries and continued to-day, to
discover _a philosophy of history,_ an _ideal history,_ a _sociology,_
a _historical psychology,_ or whatever else a science may be called,
whose object is to extract from history concepts and universal laws.
What must these laws, these universals be? Historical laws and
historical concepts? In that case, an elementary acquaintance with
the theory of knowledge suffices to make clear the absurdity of the
attempt. When such expressions as a _historical law,_ a _historical
concept_ are not simply metaphors colloquially employed, they are truly
contradictory terms: the adjective is as unsuitable to the substantive
as in the expressions "qualitative quantity" or "pluralistic monism."
History implies concreteness and individuality, law and concept
mean abstractness and universality. But if the attempt to extract
_historical_ laws and concepts from history be abandoned, and it be
merely desired to draw from it laws and concepts, the attempt is
certainly not frivolous; but the science thus obtained will be, not
a philosophy of history, but rather, according to circumstances,
either philosophy in its various forms of Ethics, Logic, etc., or
empirical science with its infinite divisions and subdivisions. The
search is in fact either for those philosophical concepts which, as
already remarked, are the basis of every historical construction and
differentiate perception from intuition, historical intuition from pure
intuition, history from art; or already formed historical intuitions
are collected and arranged in types and classes, which is exactly the
method of the natural sciences. Great thinkers have sometimes donned
the ill-fitting cloak of the philosophy of history, and notwithstanding
the covering, they have attained philosophical truths of the greatest
magnitude. The cloak discarded, the truth has remained. Modern
sociologists are rather to be blamed, not so much for the illusion
in which they are involved when they talk of an impossible science
of sociology, as for the infecundity which almost always accompanies
their illusion. It matters little that Æsthetic should be called
"sociological Æsthetic," or Logic, "sociological Logic." The grave evil
is that such Æsthetic is an old-fashioned expression of sensationalism,
such Logic verbal and incoherent. The philosophical movement to which
we have referred has however borne two good fruits in relation to
history. First of all, a keener desire has arisen for a theory of
history, that is, a theory of the nature and the limits of history, a
theory which, in conformity with the analysis made above, cannot obtain
satisfaction save in a general science of intuition, in an Æsthetic, in
which the theory of history would form a special chapter, distinguished
by the insertion of universal functions. Furthermore, concrete truths
relating to historical events have often been expressed beneath the
false and presumptuous cloak of a philosophy of history; rules and
warnings have been formulated, empirical no doubt, yet by no means
useless to students and critics. It does not seem possible to deny this
utility even to the most recent of philosophies of history, known as
historical materialism, which has thrown a very vivid light upon many
sides of social life formerly neglected or ill understood.
[Sidenote: _Æsthetic intrusions into Logic._]
The principle of authority, of the _ipse dixit_, is an intrusion
by historicity into the domains of science and philosophy which
has dominated the schools and substitutes for introspection
and philosophical analysis this or that evidence, document, or
authoritative statement, with which history certainly cannot dispense.
But Logic, the science of thought and of intellectual knowledge, has
suffered the most grave and destructive of all disturbances and errors
through an imperfect understanding of the æsthetic fact. How could it
be otherwise, if logical activity come after and contain in itself
æsthetic activity? An inexact Æsthetic must of necessity drag after it
an inexact Logic.